Above: The bright area near the penguin is the second galaxy, which is tearing the 'penguin' apart.

"The eye of the penguin is all that remains of NGC 2936, once a spiral galaxy like our Milky Way," said Joe Liske, at the European Space Agency.

"When two galaxies collide, they can be rendered unrecognisable as vast clouds of gas and dust race towards each other, crashing forcefully and sparking bursts of star formation. Hubble has been able to capture some of these mergers, providing us with beautiful astronomical images and an insight into these turbulent events."

Take a look at more amazing space pictures below.

59 Incredible Space Photos

59 Incredible Space Photos

1

of

59

Dusty Space Cloud

This image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In the instruments' combined data, this nearby dwarf galaxy looks like a fiery, circular explosion. Rather than fire, however, those ribbons are actually giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years. Significant fields of star formation are noticeable in the center, just left of center and at right. The brightest center-left region is called 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula, for its appearance in visible light.